ECSTASY USE COULD LEAD TO BRAIN RISK

Ecstasy users could permanently damage the mechanism in their brain
responsible for learning and thinking quickly, research revealed yesterday.

Former users who had not taken ecstasy for six months were equally
affected.

Michelle Wareing, who led the study, said: "We are talking about a
brain mechanism that is involved in learning new tasks. Ecstasy users,
therefore, may not pick up things so quickly.

"As soon as there is a bit of pressure, that is when they are going to
have problems. So it could affect performance at work, or in exams."

Ms Wareing and colleagues at the centre for studies in the social
sciences at Edge Hill College, in Ormskirk, Lancashire, put 30 men and
women aged 18 to 25 through two tests.

Most of those with experience of ecstasy had taken the drug once or
twice a week.

One test involved speaking aloud a randomly chosen consonant when a
bleep was heard. Pressure was applied by increasing the frequency of
the bleeps from four to two seconds, and then to one. Both current and
previous ecstasy users found the task difficult, performing
significantly worse than non-users. For two previous users, the
experience was so unpleasant they were not asked to do the test at the
one-second rate.

For the other test, participants were asked to compare rows of
letters. Half the rows were the same, and in half just one of the
letters was different. The volunteers had to classify as many rows as
possible as "the same" or "different" in the space of 30 seconds.
Again, non-users outperformed the two ecstasy user groups.

In both animals and humans ecstasy has been shown to destroy nerve
endings in the brain responsible for producing the important message
transmitter chemical serotonin.